Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in a variety of industries have an interest in ensuring that replacement components used with their products or equipment are manufactured according to standards set and controlled by the OEM. Using the aviation industry as an example, the manufacturer of a gas turbine engine, as well as the airlines and the passengers that rely on them, can be exposed to serious risks if counterfeit or replica replacement parts are readily available for and installed on these engines.
For example, such counterfeit components can pose a severe risk to the integrity of the gas turbine engines or may otherwise result in a variety of problems for the OEM and the end user. More specifically, OEM components may require rigorous attention to detail to ensure sound material properties and capabilities for the specific application as well as sophisticated inspections to verify the component performance. OEMs cannot ensure the integrity or compatibility of counterfeit parts, which may result in dangerous engine operation and increase the risk of potential failure.
In addition, counterfeit parts compromise the OEMs ability to control the quality associated with their products. For example, inexpensive replicas and inferior components on the market are a real threat, both to the engines on which they are installed and to the reputation of the OEM. Moreover, failure of a gas turbine engine due to a counterfeit replacement component might subject the OEM to misdirected legal liability and OEMs may lose a significant revenue stream by not being able to control the sale of OEM replacement components.
Additive manufacturing technologies are maturing at a fast pace. For example, very accurate additive manufacturing printers using a variety of materials, such as metals and polymers, are becoming available at decreasing costs. In addition, improved scanning technologies and modeling tools are now available. As a result, certain OEMs are beginning to use such technologies to produce original and replacement parts. However, the advance of additive manufacturing technologies also results in a lower barrier to entry into the additive manufacturing space. Therefore, replacement components may be more easily reverse engineered and copied, and there is an increased risk of third parties manufacturing and installing counterfeit components on OEM equipment, such as a gas turbine engine, resulting in the dangers described briefly above.
There is thus a need for a technology that allows genuine parts to be distinguished from counterfeits to ensure that parts created through additive manufacturing cannot be duplicated by an unauthorized third party and passed off as genuine OEM parts. Accordingly, additively manufactured components including features that may be used to identify, authenticate, and distinguish genuine parts from counterfeit parts would be useful.